Star Force: Persistent Ravage (Wayward Trilogy Book 3)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Tyrenk stood up, ruffled her short hair affectionately, then left her alone in the room with the impression that she wasn’t going to be seeing him for a while.

  Esna leaned back on her elbows, stretching out her cramping legs and not sure what emotion she was supposed to be feeling. Dozens were going through her all at the same time, and thanks to Tyrenk one at least was a very good one. She’d never been kissed by an Archon before and that wasn’t something she was going to forget anytime soon, and it was helping to counterbalance everything else going through her mind and her heart at the moment.

  “Damn it,” she said, laying back and staring at the ceiling. “I am a mess. How am I going to fix this?”

  No answers leapt forward to rescue her, so Esna just decided to do nothing and lay there. No training, no schedule, no responsibilities. Just this moment, however long it lasted or wherever it led. She was a mess and it was time to face that mess and get to know it better, even if she didn’t have a clue how to solve it.

  As she laid there in the following minutes her mind wandered back and forth through many simulations and memories until she just got tired of it all, realizing how exhausted she was, and let herself surrender to it. She could think later, right now she needed rest and there was no point in delaying that need by finding a bed, so Esna just closed her eyes and a nap gratuitously took her, allowing her a true rest that she hadn’t had since that hell hole of a high gravity world that had changed her life in ways she still couldn’t fathom…but she was going to have to, sooner or later, because she couldn’t keep moving on and burying this. That part she knew the Archon was right about.

  At least that was item #1 on the self-discovery mission now completed.

  12

  Esna didn’t say anything to Tyrenk for days, nor did he say anything to her, as she kept to herself and tried to think through her situation. After a day of doing nothing but thinking she couldn’t stand it anymore and started to do some workouts of her own. There was no track in a ship this small, but there was a series of hallways that stretched .6 miles and a couple of them were reserved for running. Sometimes the crew would need to go there, but for the most part they walked other routes to leave those open for their own training. Esna took the one that was empty and began running back and forth, touching the wall at either end before reversing direction as she worked herself into a blissful fatigue.

  She repeated that for days, not doing anything more than a few calisthenics in between. Rammak had taught her to run, and now it seemed the only safe place for her mind to go. If she could survive for weeks running across wild terrain then she could push herself for hours here…and that’s just what she did. Not bothering to count the laps, Esna just ran and ran. Not trying to accomplish anything beyond finding some badly needed familiarity, and as the old fatigue, pain, and soreness returned it brought back a flood of memories that were a welcome change from the mental loops she’d been going through, although the memory of Rammak kept causing her to cry at unsuspected times.

  He’d taught her so much, and now that the Archon wasn’t directing her she fell back on what the Calavari had said, trying to glean a sense of direction. His primary goal had been to keep her alive…and he’d succeeded. But why was it important that she live? He’d said because she was Human, but what did that mean? Why was that important?

  Esna was with Star Force now, but it didn’t feel quite right without Rammak. A part of her would have actually preferred being back on Tauntaun with him…or even Forso. When she had that realization it stopped her cold and she ran in zombie mode as she tried to figure out why she’d want to be back there.

  It wasn’t for the planet, trashed as it was, and it wasn’t for Yammar and Innit. She’d like to know what happened to them, and if they were alive explain everything, but that wasn’t it. Something was missing there that she didn’t have here and she focused on finding it, sensing it was important.

  The answer didn’t come easily and Esna wasn’t going to stop running until she found it, fearing losing the mental trail she was on. By the time the answer finally smacked her in the face she was almost dragging her legs from step to step and let herself stop and lean her head against the wall as the simple truth hit her.

  Rammak was more than a friend, rescuer, and mentor. He was the essence of Star Force, having been denied it for so many years he’d clung to what was important and preserved it, so when Esna had met him she’d gotten the truth of it without all the extraneous noise of differing points of view and motivations. Rammak was loyal to Star Force, but also grateful. He’d saved Esna because she was Human and Humans had created Star Force. He’d also said they’d saved the Calavari in the distant past. He was repaying a debt to them, but it wasn’t something that he’d walk away from once it was done.

  Tyrenk wasn’t like that. He was an Archon. He was one of Star Force’s leaders. No one rescued him, he did the rescuing. He was Star Force, but what dawned on Esna was that Star Force wasn’t one thing. It was an empire made up of a lot of people that served different purposes. Archons weren’t Commandos, Commandos weren’t techs, techs weren’t pilots, and so on. But Rammak had been more than that. He’d been a survivor thrown out of Star Force into the brutal galaxy and hadn’t succumbed to it. He’d told her some stories about what he had been doing to help Forso while he was there, not as far as leading it or trying to rebuild Star Force, but in making subtle changes here and there, often with no one even knowing who he was or what he had done.

  He was a silent warrior, hiding from the Viks for sure, but also fighting…something. What was it? Injustice she knew. Fate maybe? He’d been destined to die on Forso and had been fighting to survive, not as one of the degenerate locals but to remain a Star Force Commando even in exile. He didn’t like a no-win scenario so he intervened in others’? Rescuing them when he himself couldn’t be rescued?

  Maybe. Esna didn’t think she’d ever fully understand him, but she realized she’d been keying off him ever since Teren had died and now that Rammak was gone she was lost. Guilt about surviving when the others had died aside, she needed Rammak to show her the way and without that she didn’t know what to do.

  But he had. He’d figured it out on his own when he was abandoned. Not intentionally, and he’d never thought so, but abandoned by fate as the war moved on and he persisted in the rubble of what had once been a magnificent world reduced to cinders…but not him. He didn’t degenerate, he held to…what? What did he hold to?

  Doing the right thing. Being better than the chaos and apathy that had seized hold of the planet. Rising above those that didn’t.

  And there was the answer she’d picked up on before. To be better than everyone else.

  Not that she’d expected to be better than Rammak. He was what she wanted to be like, and not because he’d saved her. He’d showed her there was a better way, and it was that way that she needed, and needed badly.

  Even on Tauntaun before the attack, she was still on the run with him. There was a purpose, and her purpose was going with him and following his instructions as he led her through training and learning all towards that same purpose…to become better. But as Esna had been slowly realizing, she didn’t have to become better to stay in Star Force. She could live as she was now and not change at all. Tyrenk had made that clear. Once out of the war zone she could do pretty much whatever she wanted in the civilian population or she could work for Star Force in some way, not necessarily combat involved.

  Esna couldn’t do that. Ever since Teren died she’d been on the run with a purpose, and that purpose wasn’t gone now. She wasn’t safe.

  But even when they got past the front to Star Force territory she wouldn’t be safe. Maybe from the V’kit’no’sat, so long as the defenses held, but that wasn’t the only threat Rammak had been facing. He’d had to hide from their sight, but the greater enemy he’d faced had been the grim nature of the galaxy trying to suck the righteousness out of him. He’d had no one around like him to key off of,
no orders to follow, nothing but his own course to set…and he’d held to the light. That was what Star Force truly was, even if not all people in Star Force were worthy of it. Esna wasn’t, and they hadn’t abandoned her. They hadn’t left her to die while they ran. They protected her like they protected everyone else, and many of them had died for that.

  For doing the right thing.

  Esna began to realize, leaning against that wall, that Rammak had been a notch above the others. His time in exile had been a test that he’d passed, and it had made him better than before. Maybe not as fast or as strong, but better. He wasn’t being carried anymore, he sustained himself and carried others in a variety of ways prior to finding Esna, then he had carried her hard, keeping her alive and bringing her into the light.

  He was superior, and the entire time she’d been on the run with him her quest, her purpose, had been to become superior. Surviving the Viks and other threats were up there too, but the main priority above and beyond survival was to become superior…and for him, to be superior. To do the right thing, and he’d died doing the right thing. He hadn’t become corrupted on Forso. He hadn’t left her or others to die to save himself. He’d stood between them and the Viks, a living shield protecting them, and though she hated that he died doing that she realized that there was a small victory in that defeat, because he had died superior. The Viks might have been stronger, but they hadn’t been better than him. A better person wouldn’t have been fighting him, he would have been his friend and ally.

  Rammak had told her that bad people fought bad people, but good people didn’t fight good people, other than sparring, of course, thought that was never with the intent to kill. The fact that the Viks were out to kill all of Star Force meant they were inferior. Very powerful, very skilled, but not doing the right thing. Doing the right thing was often harder than doing the easy or bad thing, and one had to be superior to pull it off. Rammak had. The Viks, for all their accomplishments, were not truly superior, and for the first time she finally felt she wasn’t a pathetic weakling. She, in her small way, was better than the Viks even if she couldn’t fight them and live, because Rammak had showed her a path into the light and she’d taken her first few steps there…and that was more than the Viks had done.

  Sometimes doing the right thing meant accepting the help of others, others like Rammak, but most of the time it meant carrying the burden for others and being a shield against the darkness. To do that you couldn’t be helpless, you had to be superior or die trying…and that, Esna realized, is the purpose she wanted. The purpose the Rammak had exposed her to. It was the reason she existed.

  So tired she could barely walk on her now stiff legs, the hope inside her prompted Esna to limp off through the ship until she found Tyrenk in his private quarters, the door to which opened on its own as his mental voice reached out to her.

  Come in.

  Esna walked in, finding him around the corner near the wall in a rigid handstand.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were training,” she said, taking a step back towards the door.

  “Stay. I can talk, and I get the feeling you have something to tell me.”

  “Are you sure?” she said, looking at his upside down head while his feet were up above her head height. “That doesn’t look easy to hold.”

  Tyrenk twisted slightly, then moved sideways enough that he balanced on one arm only.

  “This is hard,” he said, holding it for a moment before coming back down on two arms. “This is easy when one can focus, and the point of this meditation is maintaining the physical focus while allowing your mind to wander to other things. It’s multi-tasking, and talking with you serves that purpose. So talk to me.”

  “If you so say,” she said, taking him at his word while looking down at his chin. “I’ve learned something…a few things, actually. First of which is I’m hurting more than I realized. Not physically, but me living when so many people died to save me hurts. I did bury it down and focus on surviving, but now it’s coming out and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

  “Admitting a problem is the first step in learning how to fix it. What else?”

  “I can’t be a civilian,” she said flatly. “There’s a war going on, but not just against the Viks. Rammak was fighting that war and when I was with him I started to do it too. It’s who I am now and I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back. It’d kill me if I did.”

  “Back where?”

  “To being normal. To not caring about anyone else and just living my life doing nothing. To not be improving, to not be doing the right thing. On Forso…I mean on Mace, everyone there was alive, but they had no purpose. They were born, grew up, did a lot of stuff that didn’t matter, had younglings, then died while others repeated the cycle. When I was there it seemed important, but now my eyes are open and I see that it’s all pointless. Living just to live doesn’t matter. Living without a purpose doesn’t matter. At least, I can’t do it anymore. And since Rammak died I’ve been lost. I’d been following him and he’d been keeping me on the right path. Now I can’t do that anymore.”

  “What path?”

  “Doing the right thing. Becoming better than the trash in the galaxy. And fighting the Viks and others who don’t do the right thing. Saving people like he saved me. Building great cities to fight starvation and storms and all kinds of other stuff that tear people down. Star Force is more than just a great civilization. It’s a fight against bad stuff, and I can’t sit on the sidelines while others do the fighting…and I don’t think I could stand to be around people that could. I think that’s partly why Rammak kept to himself on Mace. If he couldn’t bring them to be like him, they’d try to bring him to be like them. He thought he could save me, and he did, in ways that I didn’t fully realize at the time. Hell, I probably don’t fully understand now, but I know more than I did yesterday. His path is the path I want, but I think his was more than normal Commandos. Am I right about that?”

  “What he went through put him into a different category. One that even I’m not in, and couldn’t be unless I’d been tested the same way he was. He never lost himself. He was loyal when loyalty didn’t have permission to exist. I think rescuing you helped him rescue a part of himself even before you were picked up by that Ma’kri.”

  “Living there must have driven him crazy. It didn’t for me because I didn’t know any better, but now I do and I can’t go back to that. I know Star Force is far, far better, but I can’t stop running. Running made sense, it had a purpose, and I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to be comfortable. I want to fight and I want to matter. I want to learn to be superior, like he was.”

  Tyrenk finally tipped his feet over and righted himself, bringing his head up level with Esna’s as she saw his slightly reddened face as the blood started to fall back down into the lower half of his body again.

  “That’s a lot of introspection for only a few days.”

  “I think it’s been kicking around the back of my mind for a long time, but I don’t know how to be Rammak without Rammak. He taught me so much, but there’s a lot he never had time to teach me.”

  “To be Rammak you have to learn to figure it out for yourself. That’s the key.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  Tyrenk held up a finger. “Rammak didn’t start out knowing nothing. He had Star Force training and a lot of experience before he was stuck on Mace. He used that foundation as a starting point. Your time with Rammak and what he taught you is partly your foundation, now you need to get the rest of it before you can follow your own path to superiority. The truest test takes place when one doesn’t know they’re being tested, or perhaps when there’s no warning ahead of time that a test will take place. I hope you never get stranded as he did, but you need to improve yourself enough to be able to survive that if it did happen.”

  That simple sentence crystalized in Esna’s mind the thought that she’d been cultivating. It wasn’t a final destination, but it was the next par
t of her path and as Rammak had taught her you had to run the part you were on to get to the rest, even if that meant going all in and exhausting yourself. You couldn’t predict how much rest and recovery you would get going forward, so you had to work the moment for what it was, and now Esna had her mental battlemap course set for the immediate future.

  She had to become what Rammak was on the day he was stranded.

  “How do I become a Commando?”

  “Do you know what a Commando is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me?” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the wall.

  “They fight hand to hand. In ground combat, or on ships.”

  “And?”

  “They use weapons and fists?”

  “You’re missing something that is key, and that is the difference between me and a Commando.”

  “You’ve got psionics.”

  “True, but more than that?”

  “You’re better than them.”

  “Am I?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Tyrenk smiled. “If I don’t use my psionics, there are some Commandos that can beat me. Tell me how?”

  “I have no clue. I didn’t know Commandos were that strong.”

  “It’s about training. It’s all about training.”

  “Commandos don’t train as hard as Archons?”

  “Depends on the person. The word Archon means ‘leader’ and comes from the distant past before Star Force existed. We lead the military, more specifically we lead all 5 branches…Commando, Aerial, Aquatic, Naval, and Mechs. We have to be good in all five disciplines, and our Archon ranks are measured by our weakest level of the five. That means we have to split our training up to hit all of them. Commandos don’t, they’re specialists. They can spend all their time training for hand to hand combat while Archons don’t.”